Poems Of Black Africa is a body of work that includes the work of poets from all corners of Africa; Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, Madagascar, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Kenya, Gabon, Senegal, Mozambique, South Africa, Congo, Ghana, Liberia. The majority of poems were originally written in English but there are translations from Swahili, Yoruba, Portugese and French.

The anthology is edited by Wole Soyinka, an African literature demigod. He organizes thematically selected poems by African poets, surveying the experiences of Black Africa as structured and expressed in the idioms of Black Africa, while severely bringing to the forefront racial attitudes, identities and sufferings.

Most of the poems are commendable but ofcourse there are some that stand out more than most. Abioseh Nicol from Sierra Leone notably speaks volumes about his love for the continent even after being gone from the motherland in The Meaning of Africa;

…So I came backSailing down the Guinea Coast.Loving the sophisticationOf your brave new cities:Dakar, Accra, Cotonou,Lagos, Bathurst and Bissau;Liberia, Freetown, Libreville,Freedom is really in the mind.

Go up-country, so they said,To see the real Africa.For whomsoever you may be,That is where you come from.Go for bush, inside the bush,You will find your hidden heart,Your mute ancestral spirit.So I went, dancing on my way.

Now you lie before me passiveWith your unanswering green challenge.Is this all you are?This long uneven red road, this occasional successionOf huddled heaps of four mud walls…

This poem, albeit long, is a testament to Nicol’s understanding of Africa. And when he explains it, he speaks for all his brothers, Africa’s lonely sons on distant shores.’ As a reader myself, I kind of got the feeling that there is almost supposed to be an attained sophistication that automatically comes with the long lost sons of Africa that come back to claim their roots. Anyway the poem is open to multiple interpretations, such is the beauty of poetry. His contribution continued with African Easter.

Ellis Ayitey Komey, a Ghanaian, paints a very vivid picture of the richness of the land with Oblivion. Methinks it literally captures the millennials’ phrasing; take a picture it will last longer. The wealth of the land will be a lifeline even when they are dead;

I want to remember the fallen palm With whitening fluid of wine Dripping from its hardened belly In this forest of life. I want to remember it from the road With mud on my feet, And thorn-scraped flesh From the branches by the water. I want to remember them well The sight of the green-eyed forest The jubilant voices of the frogs And the pleading crises of the owls. I want to walk among the palms With their razor-edged leaves Shadowing the yam and cassava shrubs Under which the crab builds its castle And the cocoa pods drooping like mother’s Breasts feeding a hungry child. I want to remember them all Before they die and turn to mud When I have gone.

The Ghanaians contribution in the collection was massive especially with the impact of Kwesi Brew. In his A PleaFor Mercy, he takes our emotions hostage, rides them through a series of gloomy pictures of nothingness and brings them begging at the door of a Master. Truly a masterpiece;

We have come to your shrine to worship We the sons of the land The naked cowherd has brought The cows safely home, And stands silent with his bamboo flute Wiping the rain from his brow; As the birds brood in their nests Awaiting the dawn with unsung melodies The shadows crowd on the shore Pressing their lips against the bosom of the sea; The peasants home from their laboursSit by their log-fires Telling tales of long-ago.Why should we the sons of the land Plead unheeded before your shrine? When our hearts are full of song And our lips tremble with sadness? The little firefly vies with the star, The log-fire with the sun The water in the calabash With the mighty Volta, But we have come in tattered penury Begging at the door of a Master.

His additional poems in the book are The search, The Lonely Traveller and Ancestral faces.

Last but definitely not in the least mentionable is Gabriel Okara with Piano and Drums whose themes are heavy with conflict of culture, colonization, moreso the effects in post colonial Africa;

When at break of day at a riversideI hear the jungle drums telegraphingthe mystic rhythm, urgent, rawlike bleeding flesh, speaking ofprimal youth and the beginningI see the panther ready to pouncethe leopard snarling about to leapand the hunters crouch with spears poised;

And my blood ripples, turns torrent,topples the years and at once I’min my mother’s laps a suckling;at once I’m walking simplepaths with no innovations,rugged, fashioned with the nakedwarmth of hurrying feet and groping heartsin green leaves and wild flowers pulsing.

Then I hear a wailing pianosolo speaking of complex ways intear-furrowed concerto;of far away landsand new horizons withcoaxing diminuendo, counterpoint,crescendo. But lost in the labyrinthof its complexities, it ends in the middleof a phrase at a daggerpoint.

And I lost in the morning mistof an age at a riverside keepwandering in the mystic rhythmof jungle drums and the concerto.

The imagery employed in this piece is shatteringly beautiful. The use of simple and befitting metaphors showcase his reaction to each instrument; the drums represent traditional African life, while the piano represents the Western world.

Overally, the poignancy and significance of all the contributors is something to be said and reverred. To read and know them is to absolutely love them.

A collection as beautiful as it is painful to read, this should be a must-read on every poetry-lover’s list.